Exposing Oregon’s Latest Trojan Horse - Affordable Housing

By: Alicia Zinni

Affordable housing is Governor Kotek’s signature issue - a cure for Oregon’s latest ails. Apparently, affordable housing will fix street camping, worker shortages, and stagnant wages.

Remember the last government-hyped crisis that led to closed businesses, schools, and churches due to a virus? Is Oregon’s housing crisis the start of yet another trip around the problem-reaction-solution cycle?

The Problem: Inflated housing prices are supported by a complex and persistent regulatory web that was originally intended to keep people in their homes during Covid. An example is federal loan forgiveness programs.

Oregon’s covid-era rental price caps and expanded tenant rights also contribute to high housing costs, as does high material and labor costs for new home construction.

The Reaction: Unless your house is for sale, everyone in Oregon reacts to high housing prices. The phrase affordable housing probably tests well with focus groups. Who wouldn’t want lower rent or mortgage payments? Potential home buyers from Millennial and Gen Z generations have practically abandoned hope of buying into today’s housing market, which supports the perception of a crisis.

The Solution: Oregon’s answer to the housing crisis materialized once House Speaker Kotek successfully guided Governor Brown’s housing strategy through the 2019 legislature. After assuming the governorship in 2022, Kotek furthered the cause by commissioning Oregon’s Housing Needs Analysis. With California’s efforts as a guide, Oregon’s housing analysis identified a backlog of unmet housing needs, estimated rosy population growth, factored in homelessness and second home ownership, and then allocated targets for future housing by income level for Oregon’s regions and cities.

But upon closer examination, the OHNA cleverly masks the governors’s murkier initiatives like housing illegal aliens, rectifying perceived equity harms, rewarding campaign contributors, and generally tightening the Progressive power lock on Oregon politics.

Surprisingly, the OHNA plan acknowledged that eastern Oregon counties have no backlog of unmet housing needs, tacitly admitting that the free market in eastern Oregon counties has been supplying adequate levels of housing. But with little context, the plan also stated that almost 6,000 new homeless housing units need to be built east of the Cascades:

• 1522 units in northeast Oregon counties,

• 1775 units in southeast Oregon counties, and

• 2616 units in central Oregon counties.

The OHNA plan also requires cities with populations over 10,000 to prepare their own analyses for housing needs by income level. Affected eastern Oregon cities are Baker City, LaGrande, Hermiston, Ontario, and Pendleton, along with the central Oregon cities of Bend, Prineville, and Redmond.

Accomplishment towards meeting each city’s and region’s housing needs will be tracked by the newly formed Housing Accountability and Production Office on an on-line dashboard. While a cooperative approach is preferred, cities failing to meet targets may be penalized. Cities meeting overall housing targets but not in the correct income blocks, are still considered non-compliant.

The state’s housing plan effectively silences local planning commissions that might prefer more measured rates of development. Simply by following their local comprehensive management plans and enforcing zoning ordinances, these planning commissions are pejoratively referred to in state of Oregon materials as NIMBYs (Not In My Back Yard). The state’s HAPO also serves as a hotline for affordable housing developers to request state intervention when city or county planning departments and commissions aren’t giving them the level of service they think they deserve.

To accelerate development rates, Oregon agencies have developed state-wide model codes for affordable housing. Developers who submit designs conforming to these codes can bypass city zoning ordinances that would normally apply such as building-height restrictions, street setbacks, minimum lot sizes, or parking requirements. Savvy developers are preparing for these promised fast-tracked building permits by attending online meetings with agency and nonprofit personnel. Here developers learn about affordable housing rules and grant programs, including those soon to emerge from the 2025 legislative session. The HAPO dashboard goes live on July 1, 2025 with the model codes likely to be updated soon after the 2025 legislature concludes in late June.

Behind Oregon’s affordable housing effort is an assumption made in 2019 that the free market has failed Oregon. But recent shifts in national policies challenge that assumption, and housing prices are ripe for change as illegal aliens repatriate, long-term Oregon residents continue to exit the state for political and financial relief, and renegotiated international trade agreements change building supply and transportation costs. However, the state of Oregon continues unwaveringly down the path of taxpayer-subsidized housing construction. Oregon leadership may celebrate recent federal statements to direct more federal housing funds to state and local governments, but Oregon may be left out since the administration also specifies that federal funds won’t be used to house illegal aliens. Without federal funding, Oregon’s affordable housing plan may shrivel.

Several examples reveal how the state promotes social agendas under the moniker of affordable housing. Astoria’s Owens Adair II project will build housing for seniors, the disabled, and the homeless in the same building. The College View housing project in Bend combines affordable ownership units and rental units side-by-side, with some units for the homeless. The Blossom Gardens complex in Salem was originally built as affordable housing, but under new ownership is now a refugee resettlement complex.

The state of Oregon’s housing strategy places a high value on equity. Administrative rules in OAR 660-008-0075 require housing needs to be contextualized. This means that housing needs must be weighted in favor of protected groups like “communities of color, low-income communities, individuals with disabilities, and tribal communities”. Contextualizing also must address past discriminatory practices related to land and housing access. Simply by following Oregon’s existing land use regulations, a city can be found guilty of discriminatory housing actions. Current demographics suggest that new housing prioritized to meet these criteria may leave behind those who currently live in eastern Oregon.

Equity is also a factor in Oregon’s affordable housing funding programs. For example, Oregon’s Hacienda Community Development Corporation will favor grant applicants for a $30,000 down payment if they have experienced racial discrimination in housing or employment or if they have limited English proficiency. Applicants simply self-attest their discrimination experience or limited English proficiency, and they don’t need to be US citizens.

Once affordable housing gets its foot in the door, normal means of relief for neighbors affected by the project are unavailable. State-funded housing projects are considered administrative decisions and are not appealable under Oregon’s land use laws.

Get ready, eastern Oregon. Under the guise of affordable housing, Salem’s latest Trojan horse is bringing social changes you would normally resist, and Oregon’s legislature remains in session conjuring up new taxes to fund these programs.

In contrast, Idaho’s legislature addressed housing prices by unanimously passing House Bill 304, which gives current Idaho property owners $100 million in property tax relief every year.

Yet another reason to move Oregon’s border for a Greater Idaho.